Denise Low reviews Pat Daneman's "After All," on widowhood, women, mythos.

Pat Daneman is one of my favorite poets, probably not well known outside a devoted circle of to 

family and Kansas City friends (I am one of these), in part because she publishes her first book this year. Buy it, especially if you are a person over 50 or a person who has lost a family member or if you are a woman. That should cover just about everyone. Her writing concerns, often but not always, her loss of a spouse. This is not the only theme, but it makes the book essential reading. Take this poem, which could refer to night jitters in general or specifically to grief:

Night Knitting by Pat Daneman

Always good to have a row cast on—the night will come

when I’ll need the reassurance of brown or purple wool,

needles’ industry between sleeplessness and the immensity

of the world asleep. Even if snow is knitting its own caps and capes,

even if wind is undoing every knot,

I will have a pool of lamplight,

the back of a soft chair like an arm around my shoulders.

As I sit wishing for someone to talk to,

I will have the small stitches to count,

The clack-of-bone conversation, the thing—

what is it?—

falling from my hands.     c. 2018 Pat Daneman

Daneman understands the cadence of long lines, their internal sounds and patterns, like waves. She uses a conversational mode that invites readers into her narratives. This poem drops the “It is” that would make the first line grammatically complete. So the monologue begins as though the reader were present, almost as real as the missing partner. The music made by “reassurance,” “industry” “sleeplessness,” “immensity,” and “asleep” in the opening stanzas make this poetry, not prose. Then the wonderful fabulation of snow knitting forms parallels the narrator’s wool creation. Daneman is not done. In the third stanza, the poem turns into a seance, raising the specter of the dead man, whose arm is no longer around her, and whose conversation now is “clack-of-bone” rather than words. The final thrum in the poem is the passage of time, with snow “caps and capes” being undone and the indeterminate “what is it?—” that passes through her hands. This poem offers kindly advice—how to survive the insomniac nights—and it grieves not just a personal loss, but the nature of loss itself.  “Living in the Marriage Museum” is another tour de force, about the leftover contents of drawers and cupboards after a death.

                These poems help me find ways to think about loss. “To Anne Sexton” and “The Women in the Kitchen” are poems that parse women’s experiences elegantly. All the poems are small myths that populate a familiar cosmos. Each has a place. Each is necessary. Many hundreds of books of poetry are published each month by industry giants and by indie authors. Trust me. This is a high-quality, moving, book.

After All by Pat Daneman. FutureCycle Press 9781942371595 Print $15.95. Available on Kindle.  https://www.amazon.com/After-All-Pat-Daneman-ebook/dp/B07GMCZ99W/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539295592&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=%22Pat+daneman%22

PAT DANEMAN is a freelance writer and editor.  Her recent poetry appears in the anthologies New Poetry from the Midwest and Kansas Time+Place, and the journals Moon City Review, Stonecoast Review, Comstock Review and Bellevue Literary Review.   Her chapbook, Where the World Begins, was published in 2015 by Finishing Line Press.

c. 2018 Denise Low, review. Please request permission for reprint and give acknowledgement.

K.C. Writer Pat Daneman Reports on the Brooklyn Book Festival

Impressions from the 10th Annual Brooklyn Book Festival, September 20, 2015

by Pat Daneman
I was lucky to have my most recent trip to New York coincide with this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival, which bills itself as the largest free independent literary festival in the U.S. It is 10 days of events spread across venues in the heart of the borough:  Hundreds of national and international writers, editors, independent booksellers and small-press publishers. Food trucks. Books and magazines and mugs and tote bags and Kurt Vonnegut dolls for sale. Crowds of happy, friendly word lovers crammed into the narrow aisles of bookstores. Standing-room-only poetry  readings. Cheers and whistles. Long, loud applause. Panels and Readings The festival runs for a week. The main day of events this year was Sunday, September 20. I attended with my daughter, Kathy, who lives in Brooklyn and works in publishing. Eight or nine events were scheduled every hour from

10 a.m. until 6 p.m. Programs included The Writer’s Life, with Joyce Carol Oates, Ben Greenman and Pico Iyer reading from their new work and discussing process and inspiration; John Leguizamo and Jonathan Lethem talking about storytelling; and memoirists Charles Blow, Augusten Burroughs, Kate Bolick and Robert Christgau sharing stories about family. Terry McMillan was there and A.M. Homes, Jim Shepard, Stuart O’Nan, Heidi Julavits, Russell Banks, Edwidge Danticat, Andre Dubus III—to name just a few of the dozens of writers I love to read but didn’t get to see because I couldn’t be in four places at once.

Shopping Every book by every author at the festival was for sale somewhere and also books from indie publishers like Ugly Duckling Presse, Featherproof and Poets Wear Prada, and exciting lit mags with exciting names: Bomb. Epiphany. Confrontation. I fell victim to a T-shirt vendor displaying merchandise that featured my favorite Brooklyn poet, the one who rode the ferry and wrote “. . . stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn! / Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!” 
Prizes Kathy and I bought hot dogs and fries from Nathan’s food truck and found a shady seat for the Quotables contest. Festival staff read a quote and the first person to call out the author’s name won a prize. Not to brag, but Kathy and I each won an official BBF T-shirt within 5 minutes of arriving. Then we decided to move on to give everyone else a chance.

Inspiration Tina Chang, Marie Howe and Jean Valentine—past and present New York state poets laureate—reading new work—angry, moving, obstinate poems about current events. Saeed Jones reading from his debut collection Prelude to a Bruise. It is the story of Boy, a queer African-American growing up in the South. It is stunning. Buy it. Mark Doty leading a conversation between Elizabeth Alexander and Tracy K. Smith about poets going deep to write memoirs of personal grief.
Ping-Pong Tournament
The Battle for the Paddle—Brooklyn Book Festival vs. Brooklyn Public Library. I regret to say we skipped this. Maybe next year.  www.brooklynbookfestival.org 
  

Annual indie party at Greenlight Bookstore

Pat Daneman is a New York native who lives in Lenexa, KS.  She is a poet, pet sitter and freelance writer/editor.  Her most recent poems appear in the anthology New Poetry from the Midwest, I-70 Review, Comstock Review and Bellevue Literary Review.   On November 7, she will be teaching a workshop on putting together a poetry chapbook at The Writer’s Place in Kansas City. Her chapbook, Where the World Begins, is available from Finishing Line Press . See more at Pat Daneman